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ack noWLeDGments I would like to dedicate Going North to those who have made it and my life as a writing teacher possible. First was my mother, who is now slipping away. She gave me the gift of literacy when she brought home from the library a book about Buffalo Bill instead of the comics I had requested to fill my days while I was staying home from school with the mumps. I hid my disappointment. I opened the book the next day after my mother and father had left for work, inwardly vowing not to like what I was seeing, but after a few pages, I was off and running. The books piled up. Next is Charles Cooper, who patiently initiated me into the academy. As this book will make clear, I have a certain degree of working-class contempt for the academic ethos, but I have loved my life as a writing teacher, working with students and learning with them about the part writing plays in the drama of the self struggling like Michelangelo’s St. Matthew to free itself from the rock. Equally as important are my friends in the rhetoric and composition community, where I have found my third home. I have treasured our friendships in our virtual social life that momentarily materializes when we see each other in conferences before returning home. I have known them in varying degrees of intensity and for different durations. Collectively, they have given a deep color to the tapestry of my professional life in a way I can’t begin to explain. I would like to name them, but when I call someone in, I leave others out, which would contradict what I mean. By far most important have been my wife, Sarah, and my two children , Heather and Jesse. All of you know what family members have to put up with when one of them decides he or she has something to write. ...

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